Reviews by kuvien

You ever have a vocalist just totally resonate with you? Something about Welch's voice comforts and calms me, her storytelling more metaphor than narrative. It’s like… she sings from the perspective of someone who is content with being sad, clinging to the hope of better times. "Look at Miss Ohio" is one of the strongest album openers I've ever heard.

Faded silver-nitrate moments of poor rustics struggling against the inevitable, putting their trust in Jesus and in barroom girls, roaming, scraping out a living, dying with a hated jar of moonshine in their hands.

As we are slaughtered in the prime of our strength, is not death more often premature than not? Running wild, bucking against the world, and then suddenly reaped by the invisible scythe. Look around at your fellow yearlings. This is, indeed, Hell.

A charming collection of songs slow waltzing with lonesomeness. Just a girl with her guitar and a songbook with a broken heart drawn on the front cover.

This is some more of those cutting-floor demos recorded one weekend back in 2002. I feel like these tracks have more of a swing and groove than the songs on Vol. 1. Nice bluegrass banjo not overdone.

Along with David Rawlings, Welch recorded these demos over a productive and inspired weekend back in 2002. Word is it was to fulfill a recording contract. But, alas, the songs were discarded and not picked up off the cutting room floor for nearly two decades. Here they are, though, and they're brilliant, nuanced renderings of traditional American folk tunes. Like any re-imagining of folk songs, this recording is a trip around the country, from Chinatown to the Bible Belt, from hard times to high times. Anyway, what's this I hear about this "country" girl being from New York City? New York City?!

Every time I hear The Weeknd, I think about Uncut Gems.

First off: the name of the band. It means "wayfarer" or "wanderer". Ok. This album? In the grand tradition of freaky female folk out of Poland, this offering delivers ritualistic caterwauling and clucking over a minimal tribal-drone atmosphere that evokes the elemental spaces between land and sea, between sky and earth. If you're familiar with Księżyc, then this music won't be any surprise, though it is both exciting and refreshing. After all, this album is released on the label founded by a member of Księżyc.

Soft Machine’s drummer joins this quintet for some smooth, uplifting, reined-in complex jazz with interesting interplay among the players. Weber’s bass really pops out in front of everything else, and if you like that sound—as well as some wild soprano sax soloing—then this album will hit just right. What gets me is the tickling and teasing of the lone flute amid the percussive spaces of the piano and drums, though. Try this album next time you kick back at home with a nice drink and some homemade snack. Something baked.

Like so many prog and fusion albums from the 70s, this one follows (the highly enjoyable) cookie-cutter formula of having side A be the appetizers and side B bringing the sprawling main course. If you couldn't make it past side A, therefore, you don't deserve side B is my takeaway from that whole phenomenon. Give me a track to slip into and explore, from the re-emerging repetitive bass riff that forms the structure of the final track or the piano that takes the theme and soars with it or the synthesizer that steals it and evens it all out.

Miroslav Vitouš’ last hurrah with the band, the last track even being named after him. There’s just enough but not too much funk on this album for my taste. It’s one of those sweet spots. An extremely popular album at the time that doesn’t seem to get that much love from jazz fans these days.

I imagine being a world-traveling businessman stuck in some nameless business hotel somewhere with nothing to do but watch the forecast for weather around the world and being pleasantly surprised that this is the music by which I learn that it's going to be sunny and mild in New York tomorrow.

This is somehow worse than Belle & Sebastian.

Is this guy for real? wtf is this shit? Somebody grab the other side of that dude's head and snap his neck.

The vocalist is the woman whose death caused the crow to look at the man.

I just did my daily Duolingo quests while this played in the background, while this old man raised a glass in tribute to himself.

The way I approach this album is to look at it as a movie soundtrack. Seriously. What with the warbly organ, the orchestral strings, the cinematic choral vocals, and the soft sustained saxophone, this feels to me like jazz laid over a 70s film score. And though that's not a bad thing, there's not much here that's challenging--I mean, there's nothing really to unpack. Just sit back and enjoy this one, perhaps best with some accompanying activity.

This is digestible spiritual jazz for the masses. It’s not bad. It just doesn’t demand anything from the listener, especially if you’re acquainted with the really far-out weird spiritual jazz out there. This album has a lot of cinematic sounds, perfect for a film soundtrack looking for a modern-retro feel. Hell, “Fists of Fury” could be on the Django Unchained soundtrack.

Full, beautiful, rich, and not at all demanding, which is just what you want out of your jazz sometimes. The fact that he returns to themes propounded earlier in the EP is an unexpected touch, not something jazz usually does. But this is jazz with chorals and hooks. Almost cinematic in its swells.

"beer commercial lead-guitar shit"